


This is his home

by radiboyn



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Ableism, Autistic Character, Autistic Spencer Reid, Gideon isn't good, Internalised ableism, Stimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:48:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24063847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radiboyn/pseuds/radiboyn
Summary: Six snippets of life for Spencer Reid.(Or, my first 5+1 fic.)
Comments: 23
Kudos: 515





	This is his home

**i.**

Spencer Reid is 22 years old, and he is different. 

He knows this fact as well as he knows every word of every book in his local library. He’s known this fact for as long as he can remember. 

Jason Gideon looks at him like something worth looking at, like he sees past the awkward and shy young man and sees the potential Spencer knows he has. Gideon takes him under his wing, teaches him about the FBI and makes him really believe he can do it, and Reid moulds himself in his image, takes parts of himself and chips away until Gideon’s image stares back. 

He cannot change this.

It’s is first day with the BAU. He is 22 years old, and seconds from a meltdown in Jason Gideon’s office. 

He paces back and forth, one arm crossed over his chest like a shield, his hand tucked under his armpit. His jaw thrums with tension where he has it clenched tight, his teeth gritted together painfully, breaths coming in hard pants from his nose. 

Gideon watches on from behind his desk, his expression—

~~neutral~~

~~angry~~

~~disappointed~~

—Reid can’t tell. 

“Calm down,” Gideon says simply. Calm down. Calm down. Reid repeats it like a mantra in his head, in time with his steps. One, two, three, turn. One, two, three, turn. One, two— “Come on, you’re better than this.” He sounds almost flippant, like this whole thing is some trivial matter, like Reid doesn’t feel like he’s seconds from flying apart. “You get this far and you think you can’t handle one unexpected change of plans? You’re better than that.”

Oh, the unexpected change of plans. Delivered to him by Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Hotchner, his new boss, that he’s to undergo not one, but two independent psych evaluations before he can be fully instated into the unit. Reid’s throat closes up at the thought again, his eyes squeezing shut as he continues his pace. He can’t. They’ll work it out. They’ll see he’s different, too, they’ll find the weakly constructed tributes to Gideon and peel them away until it’s all him. 

They won’t want him in the unit. Not once they know.

“Can’t—“ he chokes out, his hand curling into a fist. He’s tired. He wants this to stop now. He wants to go home. 

Gideon stands, moving to the door. “Come find me when you’re finished,” he says. Reid can imagine him rolling his eyes. It fits with the tone. _Come find me when you’re finished acting like a child. Come find me when you can be better._

(The meltdown lasts for another half an hour. Agent Hotchner finds him splashing cold water on his face in the bathroom, but Reid brushes it off without ever meeting his eyes.)

(He passes both evaluations. Gideon claps him on the back.)

(He can be better.)

**ii.**

Spencer Reid is 22 years old, and he thinks JJ might be his best friend. 

He doesn’t really have a benchmark for what qualifies a best friend, but the feeling he gets when JJ laughs at his bad jokes and ruffles his hair and calls him Spence seems like every story he’s ever read. It’s better. He’s _happy._

For the first time in his life, someone finds him endearing. It’s strange to think about, but he doesn’t complain. He’ll take endearing over annoying or arrogant any day. 

JJ always notices his stimming. 

He tries his best to quash his most obvious stims, but he’ll never be able to get rid of them all. He still taps the tips of his fingers against his thumbs when he’s nervous, still rocks on his feet if he’s stood. Nobody on the team comments, except for JJ. 

“That’s disgusting.”

Reid blinks, looks up. The light in the precinct back rom forces him to squint; when JJ’s face falls into sharp focus, he notices her looking disapprovingly at the sleeve of his cardigan. 

Reid blushes, whipping his hand under the table. He hadn’t realised he’d been chewing on the cuff. Under the desk, the red material is dark and wet with his saliva. 

“I don’t…” he trails off. He doesn’t know what he was going to say. 

But JJ just rolls her eyes, smiles, and deposits the files she’d brought for him on the table. “Remember to get something to eat,” she says, turning on her heel and starting to walk away, before she turns again, giving him a look. “And maybe think about investing in one of those… chew things? You know, for, uh, sensory… stuff.”

“I’m not—“ he rushes to correct her, but what is there to correct? What can he say? I’m not—

_disabled._

_autistic._

JJ just smiles, nodding once. She gives him another long look, like she’s reading him. Profiling, without being a profiler. “Lunch. Don’t forget.”

**iii.**

Garcia understands him, maybe better than anyone else on the team. 

For all their differences, they’re very similar in a lot of ways. Reid’s never felt like he’s found someone just like him, but Garcia comes the closest anyone ever has. 

Any friend who watches Dr Who with him is a friend for life, either way. 

Garcia’s apartment is loud in every possible way, so the binge-watch marathons like tonight’s mostly happen at his place. He doesn’t mind inviting Garcia into his private space, for reasons he can’t quite name. 

When he comes back from his kitchen, two mugs of hot chocolate in his hands, he finds Garcia stood over his desk, her finger tracing over the pages of an open notebook. 

She turns when she hears his footsteps. “Oh, thank you!” she smiles, rushing forward to take a mug from him. “You know, I thought you had all this stuff in your big ‘ol genius head,” she says, and Reid takes a moment to realise what she’d been reading. The notebooks at his desk are filled from cover to cover with statistics and facts and quotes, mostly about the FBI and its history, but also about anything else his brain has latched onto in the past few months. 

Reid feels his cheeks heat, and he shrugs. “I _do._ But I like having stuff written down. It’s—“

“Comforting,” Garcia says, at the same time Reid says “—weird.”.

“It’s not weird,” Garcia insists. She sits back down on his settee, waiting for him to sit next to her before she continues. “It’s—I totally get it,” she says emphatically, looking into his eyes.

Something about her makes him believe that she does get it, and that he doesn’t have to explain himself to her. The truth is that he just gets so excited about particular topics (it had been the weather, growing up. He’d filled notebook upon notebook with every fact and figure he could get his hands on, detailed weather maps drawn in crayon and felt tip on every other page.)

Later, when Garcia is gone, he piles the notebooks back up on the corner of his desk. “Not weird,” he murmurs, tracing a fingertip over the spines. _“Comforting.”_

**iv.**

The worst time for him to have a meltdown his when sharing a hotel room, but it happens anyway. 

Maybe that’s exactly the reason why it happens. He doesn’t know. All he knows is that his skin is on fire and he can’t get the burning to stop. 

He slides down the wall and curls up in a ball, as tightly as he can, his legs crossed at the ankles and pulled up to his chest. He presses his hands as firmly over his ears as he can manage, painfully hard, but even then the noise won’t stop. He’s losing his grip on control, and there’s nothing he can do to get it back. 

“Woah, kid, what’s wrong with you?” 

Morgan. Derek Morgan— friend. Reid hadn’t heard him coming in. 

He can’t reply. He purses his lips and still manages to taste tears. His chest aches. 

“Can you look at me? Can you talk?”

Reid shakes his head into his knees, greasy hair falling down across his forehead, in front of his eyes. The feeling makes the buzzing under his skin ten times worse; he whines deep in his throat in response. 

“Kid, can I help? Is there anything I can do?”

Blanket, Reid thinks. He’s brought his blanket from home. 

He flaps his hand in the direction of the bed, pointing at his go-bag. He’s unpacked everything from it apart from one thing. 

Morgan unzips the bag and pulls out the last item: a pale green blanket, clearly well-loved. 

He hands it down to Reid like one might hand meat to a starving tiger. Tentative. Unsure. 

Reid takes it from him, humming his thanks from his tight throat. He bunches up the pale green material and presses his face into it, surrounding himself. 

The fabric is old, worn to the point of being little more than a frayed rag. But it smells of home and feels like comfort and safety and everything else Reid needs right now. He breathes in the familiar scent and can already feel himself calming down, especially with the harsh light of the hotel room being muted considerably. He sits like that for ten minutes, curled around the material, breathing it in. 

Wen he re-emerges and finally lifts his eyes, he finds Morgan watching him. His expression is confused; a little dazed, a little curious. Reid feels his cheeks heat, but he’s too tired to feel anything more than a little embarrassed. 

“You back with me?”

Reid nods. He doesn’t trust his voice yet, but he smiles weakly at Morgan, hoping to convey both apology and thanks. 

He glances to his bed, and then back to Morgan. 

Morgan gets the message. “Yeah, you look beat. Get some rest, kid. I’ll keep the noise down.”

The next morning, Morgan is up and about before him, which surprises him, considering he’d gone to sleep not long after 7. 

“Morning, pretty boy. Feeling better?”

Reid clears his throat, nods, and says, “Yeah. Much.”

Morgan smiles at that, but then his expression sobers. “You wanna tell me what last night was all about?”

“Just a panic attack.” The lie rolls easily off his tongue. How many times has he explained away his autistic behaviours as allistic problems? _It was a panic attack. I lost my voice. I was just tired._

Morgan’s brow furrows. “Didn’t look like any panic attack I’ve ever had.”

“Yeah, well—“ Reid shuffles out of the bed, holding the blanket against himself to hide his bare chest. “I’m gonna go shower.”

(Reid will find out in less than a year’s time what Morgan has panic attacks over. He hopes Morgan knows that he can talk to Reid any time, and that Reid will always listen.)

(Morgan does.)

**v.**

The town hall is too loud, and too crowded.

He hadn’t expected nearly this many people to turn up to the emergency meeting— sure, he’d known the population of the tiny town written down, but to be physically surrounded by so many people is something different altogether. 

He presses his back against the wall, trying to remember to do his job. He’s here to profile. 

He wants out.

Hotch is stood to his right, a few metres away, effortlessly blending in despite his dark suit and darker expression. He’s like a chameleon. It’s a skill Reid knows he’ll never have. 

Reid notices Hotch watching him. It’s about the only thing he can notice, his brain too overloaded to take in anything he’s supposed to be looking out for. Random, unconnected pieces of information jump out the crowd — a screaming child, an overworked mother, a man who looks as uncomfortable as Spencer feels — but it’s all too nebulous, and only serves to make his head hurt more, his expression drawing into a wince. 

He doesn’t notice Hotch at his side until the older agent speaks. 

“Do you need to leave?”

His voice makes Spencer jump, anxiety punching through his chest as he desperately wills his brain to catch up and process what’s been said. 

“Reid,” Hotch says, voice still low. 

Reid shakes his head minutely. He can manage this. He doesn’t need Hotch to think he can’t. 

His hopes are dashed when a woman desperately cries out —

_“Brady!”_

— and Spencer knows he’s done for the moment he hears the shouting. Her voice is too loud, too shrill, too panicked, and it sends his heart rate skipping up up up, his mouth going dry. 

Hotch is still by his side, and he takes Spencer’s arm gently, leaning in closer. “With me,” he says, the hand on Spencer’s arm guiding him in the direction of the door. 

He’s afraid to look up at his unit chief’s face when they finally make it outside. He doesn’t want to see the anger or annoyance at him being unable to just do his job. 

But when Hotch speaks, his voice is gentle. “Reid, look at me.”

And Spencer risks glancing up.

“Are you alright?”

It takes Spencer a few moments to process that the expression Hotch is wearing isn’t one of disapproval. Instead, he looks concerned, and gentle, and it’s enough to encourage Reid’s rapidly tripping heart rate to slow a little, enough for his head to clear. 

“I’m okay,” Reid nods. He feels his cheeks heat slightly. “I, uh— I’m not a fan of crowds?”

Hotch just nods, and hands Reid a set of car keys from his pocket. “You can wait in the SUV, or you can go and work with JJ at the precinct. We’ll be finished here within the hour.”

Reid buffers for a moment, blinking. “I can— I can stay if you need me to. The profile says the unsub is likely to attend, and—“

“—and there’ll be 4 of us in there to watch the meeting.”

Reid knows he could continue to fight, but he also knows that Hotch is right. They will be fine without him. He nods, thanks Hotch and turns to leave. 

He doesn’t see the long, analysing look Hotch gives him as he does.

**vi.**

It takes Gideon leaving for him to acknowledge what they all know. 

He’s been gone for two months, and the team feels different. The plane rides home are lighter, friendlier. Reid finds himself with genuine confidence for the first time in his life. 

After a particularly successful case, Reid lets himself sit by a window, watching the clouds.

“Enjoying yourself?” JJ asks, and Reid can’t keep the grin off his face. His right hand is flapping excitedly at his side, and he feels no pressure to stop. 

He says, “when I was a kid, I wanted to know everything I could about clouds.”

Across from him, Morgan snorts. “Totally normal kid stuff.”

“No,” Reid says, and he doesn’t think, just takes in the smiles on all his friends’ faces and decides there’s no reason to hold back. “Not really. I was autistic— am autistic. Still.”

The only reaction from the team is a collection of vaguely bemused looks. Spencer goes back to looking out his window, his fingers wiggling with excitement again. 

This is his home.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I'm back! I really hope you enjoyed this. I wanted to write something a bit different, with a Gideon who isn't as supportive or understanding as he is in my other pieces. I'm proud of how it turned out!
> 
> Comments and kudos make my _life_. Or shoot me a message @radiboyn on tumblr!


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